Japan’s universal health insurance system is facing collapse due to systemic abuse by foreign nationals, particularly from China. This article examines the legal changes under the Democratic Party government and the media’s role in enabling large-scale exploitation of Japan’s public healthcare system.

This article reveals how Japan’s universal health insurance system is being systematically abused by foreign nationals, particularly from China.
Legal revisions enacted under the Democratic Party government drastically lowered the threshold for enrollment, enabling large-scale misuse of insurance cards funded by Japanese taxpayers.
Through firsthand accounts from medical professionals, the essay exposes insurance fraud, broker networks, and structural weaknesses in Japan’s healthcare system.
It argues that political negligence and media complicity—especially by Asahi Shimbun—have allowed this crisis to deepen, while public awareness remains dangerously low.

2017-07-01
From the previous chapter, I will convey to Japan and the world a major work that teaches facts which all Japanese citizens must first know.
From the previous chapter, I will convey to Japan and the world a major work that teaches facts which all Japanese citizens must first know.
“China’s Medical Rush Threatens to Collapse Universal Health Insurance.”
Keiko Kawazoe, nonfiction writer.
If it were Trump, he would say, “Build a medical wall against China.”
Easy enrollment in national health insurance.
An acquaintance of mine who is a doctor confided the following.
“Chinese people who clearly entered Japan as tourists are fraudulently using insurance to receive medical treatment.
I have also heard that Asian, Eastern European, and South American women working at night in entertainment districts are lending and borrowing insurance cards.
In recent years, it has become a serious problem in Japan that national health insurance cards are extremely easy to obtain.”
An acquaintance who is a nurse also said this.
“There are Chinese patients on public assistance who are wearing luxury brand goods.
I have quietly whispered with doctors, saying, ‘That insurance card looks suspicious.’
I have also heard through acquaintances that Chinese brokers are running a business that arranges medical treatment in Japan.”
For a long time, counterfeit passports, fake students, counterfeit currency and cards, falsified resumes, forged documents, sham marriages, fake refugees, illegal stays, underground labor, impersonation, paper companies, and other forms of deception and illegality have been staple survival tactics among Chinese nationals.
At some point, illegal acquisition and misuse of Japanese insurance cards was added to that list.
This trend appears to have gained momentum after July 9, 2012, when a partial revision of the Basic Resident Registration Act was implemented under the Democratic Party administration, dramatically lowering the threshold for foreign nationals to join national health insurance.
Before the revision, foreign nationals were required to have a residence status of two years or more, or to be objectively recognized as staying in Japan for at least one year, in order to enroll in national health insurance.
After the revision, the requirement became having a residence status exceeding three months, or being objectively recognized as staying in Japan for more than three months.
As a result of the revision, the Alien Registration Act was abolished, and under the principle of equality between Japanese and non-Japanese residents, “mid- to long-term foreign residents” subject to the Basic Resident Register became eligible to receive residence cards.
The Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act defines “mid- to long-term residents” as foreign nationals with a residence status exceeding three months.
Therefore, foreign nationals holding visas such as student visas, business management visas, work visas, or designated activity visas—generally allowing stays of 90 days or more—are required to receive residence cards at municipal offices and enroll in national health insurance.
Of course, I do not intend to categorically deny foreign nationals the right to possess insurance cards.
However, it is astonishing that because “mid- to long-term residents” are defined as those staying for more than just three months, a system originally intended as insurance for Japanese citizens funded by our tax money was “degraded” to allow foreigners staying only three months to use it equally.
Why does no one raise their voice loudly about this?
Such an “customer-first” country surely exists nowhere else on Earth but Japan.
To be continued.
How many members of the Democratic Party who enacted such foolish policies are, in reality, not merely agents of China or South Korea, but could even be called spies?
This Democratic Party and Asahi Shimbun, which made it the ruling party,
continue to attack Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is one of the most outstanding politicians in recent history and among the greatest leaders in the world today,
and who has pursued policies befitting Japan—a nation where the Turntable of Civilization is turning, and which must lead the world alongside the United States for the next 170 years—
domestically overcoming more than two decades of deflation through Abenomics, and internationally advancing diplomacy with a global perspective.
Even now, no small number of Japanese citizens continue to be manipulated by such absurd and malicious actions.